“For a guy that’s been beaten and pulverized, he’s doing fairly well,” said the attorney Saturday for a man whose violent arrest by San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies was captured on video.

Francis Pusok, the High Desert man seen in the video after leading deputies on an hourslong chase Thursday, “is a pretty tough cookie,” said girlfriend Jolene Bindner.

“He has a lot of swelling, bumps and bruises,” she said Saturday. “He says he’s really sore.”

During an interview outside her home in Apple Valley, Bindner declined to comment on the specifics of Pusok’s case or his criminal history.

She said she met Pusok through a friend at San Andreas High School in Highland and have been dating for 13 years.

Since being shocked and angered by the video Thursday evening, Bindner, who is pregnant with a boy, has been trying to protect her daughters from the case, while cooperating with the media.

“I’m trying to do as much as I can,” she said. “It gets exhausting though.”

On Friday, Sheriff Jim McMahon suggested Pusok fled deputies because he was on probation after misdemeanor convictions in 2014 for cruelty to another’s animal and resisting an officer. McMahon said Pusok shot someone’s dog. Pusok’s lone felony conviction is from a 2006 attempted robbery, according to San Bernardino County court records.

“The reason it was brought up was to dirty the guy that got beat up by the police,” he said.

In a phone interview, Terrell didn’t answer questions about why Pusok fled, but said it was the wrong thing to do.

Terrell said he would like to see the FBI fully investigate the Sheriff’s Department, an agency he has sued several times on behalf of inmates at West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga who claim guards abused them.

At his news conference Friday, McMahon said the sheriff’s deputies who drove up a dirt road tucked below rocky hills on the outskirts of Apple Valley weren’t looking for Pusok.

They thought the property was empty, McMahon said.

But Pusok was there. And he fled in his girlfriend’s 2005 Dodge Stratus.

Eventually Pusok ditched the car — likely crashing it, although the extent of the damage to it is unknown. The Sheriff’s Department has taken possession of the vehicle.

Pusok then allegedly stole a horse, fell off in the middle of the desert and surrendered to deputies.

First, his lawyer said, he was Tased. The Sheriff’s Department has said the Taser was ineffective, but video, recorded by a KNBC Channel 4 news helicopter, appears to show Pusok convulse from electric shock.

Then, as Pusok lays on the ground with his hands behind his back, a deputy kicks him in the head. Another deputy kicks him between the legs. They repeatedly strike him as more deputies circle Pusok and hit him.

The video, which McMahon called “disturbing,” has already led to a criminal and internal investigation by the Sheriff’s Department, an FBI civil rights investigation and 10 deputies being placed on paid leave.

Pusok is being held at West Valley Detention Center in lieu of $100,000 bail on suspicion of possessing stolen property, stealing a horse and evading police. He hasn’t been charged.